Birds’ nests

My interest was piqued by the letters concerning possible uses of birds’ nests by Victorians [ FT412:73, 414:71]. Volume 2 of Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor includes quite an extensive interview with the chap pictured. They seemed to have been sold mainly to hobbyists and people trying to hatch the eggs: “There’s one gentleman as I sells to is a wholesale dealer in window-glass – and he has a hobby for them. He puts ’em into glass cases, and makes presents of ’em to his friends. He has been one of my best customers. I’ve sold him a hundred nesties, I’m sure. There’s a doctor at Dalston I sell a great number to – he’s taking one of every kind of me now. The most of my customers is stray ones in the streets. They’re generally boys. I sells a nest now and then to a lady with a child; but the boys of twelve to fifteen years of age is my best friends. They buy ’em only for cur’osity. I sold three partridges’ eggs yesterday to a gentleman, and he said he would put them under a bantam he’d got, and hatch ’em.” Barry Hall

By email

Re Caraline Brown’s letter on street sellers of birds’ nests [ FT412:73]: the purpose of the trade was to provide birds as pets. The street sellers (often, though not always, Roma) would travel out to the woodlands surrounding London to find nests; by the mid-19th century the seller would typically have to travel as far as Epping Forest, though the 18th-century trade in these products would probably be able to source nests closer to the metropolis. A hen could normally be induced to sit on the eggs to encourage them to hatch. The chicks would then be used as pets, with songbirds (particularly linnets and nightingales) being the most prized; though almost any bird might be sold for the right price.

The trade in birds’ nests would eventually die out, due to changing fashions and, no doubt, the growing difficulty in sourcing the nests with the over-exploitation of the habitats of wild birds. The death of the trade throws light on how attitudes towards wild animals have been transformed, as well as the shifting nature of societal norms. As late as the mid-19th century, the sale of birds’ nests would be considered so normal that no one would feel the need to explain why the trade existed; 150 years later the world has changed so much that the sale of birds’ nests has become a puzzling oddity.

Jacob Middleton

Tascott, New South Wales